More Than Half of Male Athletes Surveyed at This College Admit to Coercive Sex

File this under "disturbing": A new study in the journal Violence Against Women shows that more than half of male undergraduate athletes — many of whom were just playing on recreational teams — who were surveyed at an unnamed university in the Southeast have pressured someone into having sex.

The survey included students at an unnamed Division I school, and included 379 men in total. Of those surveyed, 159 of the men were part of recreational sports teams and 29 were intercollegiate athletes, while 191 were not college athletes of any kind. New York magazine points out that previous research had shown that intercollegiate athletes commit a large number of sexual assaults, but the new study shows a link with recreational athletes, too.

However, this isn’t to say that all or only male athletes commit sexual assault. The study also found that 38% of non-athletes admitted to coercing a partner into sex.

But what all this does go to show is the importance of consent, and teaching people what it looks like and how to recognize and obtain it. The researchers also found that those who admitted to pressuring others into sex were more likely to believe things like “If a woman doesn't fight back, it isn't rape” and "Women should worry less about their rights and more about becoming good wives and mothers,” the Washington Post reported.

"What our study tells us is it’s not just about improving knowledge of what is rape and how to treat women in relationships," study researcher Sarah Desmarais, a forensic psychologist at North Carolina State University, told the Washignton Post, "but attitudes about equality, and detailed knowledge about roles of responsibility."